New book reveals 'jailhouse justice' system in Sydney's Long Bay

By

nine.com.au staff

Dennis Ferguson (AAP).

Guards working at Sydney's Long Bay Jail dished out regular beatings to notorious inmates paedophile Dennis Ferguson and gang-rape leader Bilal Skaf — a book on life behind the prison's bars has revealed.

The book Australia's Hardest Prison: Inside the Walls of Long Bay Jail reveals an unofficial system of rough justice that was dished out by guards to some of its more infamous prisoners whose names were known and despised by inmates and the public alike.

When paedophile Dennis Ferguson was admitted, one unnamed and retired guard gave the new inmate a verbal dressing down before laying him out with several hard punches.

"'You are a f---ing scumbag,' he shouted straight into the criminal's face. 'And you will be treated as one,'" the book revealed about the paedophile's arrival.

"I smashed him…The heap of s--- fell to the floor," the book states, the retired guard adding: "There's no way a guard today could do it."

The book also disclosed another guard's violent interaction with 22-year-old Bilal Skaf, the man convicted of leading pack of men in several gang rapes in Sydney's western suburbs.

Described as a "loud mouth" who lacked any contrition, the guard detailed how he entered Skaf's cell and punched him several times before throwing him against the wall because he allegedly wrote "I rape prison's officer's wives" on the wall with a texta.

"'Then I grabbed his head,' recounted the guard. 'And I used his face to clean off the texta,'" said the unnamed guard.

The book describes a punitive system in which guards and inmates alike dished out jailhouse justice to protected prisoners — those convicted of sex offences or informers who required segregation from the general population.

During the 1980s and '90s, Long Bay Jail recorded the second highest number of prison homicides with five men killed while in custody there.